By Guy Page
The State of Vermont has no secure location to hold treat our most violent children.
The Woodside Juvenile Rehabilition Center in Essex Junction closed in October 2020 after the state settled a federal lawsuit alleging excessive use of restraints at the 30-bed secure facility, the only one of its kind in Vermont. At the time the facility was often empty anyway.
Elected officials from Gov. Scott on down promised they’d open another program, somewhere, to keep these children safe from each other and the rest of Vermont safe from them while providing the mental health, substance abuse, and just plain adolescent direction they need.
That hasn’t happened. A temporary facility in Middlesex opened, then closed. It’s not that the State hasn’t tried to open a permanent, secure youth treatment facility. It has applied heavy pressure on the tiny Orange County Town of Newbury to accept a privately-run (and perhaps euphemistically called) ‘group home for mentally disabled children.’
Newbury’s not buying it. A local board vehemently rejected the plan. 92% of voters said NO in a referendum. Despite an initial promise to proceed only with community support, the State pushed back and won in the Vermont Supreme Court, four of five justices agreeing that “all youth who commit a crime are mentally disabled.” Now Newbury’s demanding a review of the decision. Former youth worker and Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Sears told fellow lawmakers last month he despairs of ever seeing Newbury facility opened. Sen. Jane Kitchel – the chair of the Appropriations Committee – asked the Scott administration to pull the plug.
Gov. Phil Scott’s 2025 budget proposes funding for a youth psychiatric facility at a Bennington hospital. But right now, today, except for a secure, staffed bed here and there in the 14 counties, the Department of Children and Families (DCF) has no choice but to ship violent children out-of-state, far from community and family support. And even those beds aren’t always available. When they’re not, the dangerous, difficult burden falls on DCF to provide what it calls “staffing.” This catch-all term means watching violent youth in hotels, in group homes, in foster care, and a myriad of other options.
The stats reflect the growing dependence on staffing. In 2023 there were 129 staffings of a minimum of 10 hours and usually overnight.This is a significant increase from prior years. In 2022 there were 63 staffings,
21-year DCF veteran Trissie Casanova told the Legislature Jan. 13 that staffing is not a program, is not secure, and is not the answer.
We need an intervention that includes a secure facility now,” Trissie Casanova told the House Institutions Committee. “Yesterday we had two 14-year-old youths who seriously assaulted another resident in one of our programs. As of tomorrow, we will be staffing one of those youth with law enforcement.”
Lack of a secure facility has an awful ‘ripple effect’ on the community, Casanova said. Dangerous criminals released back into communities. Unsafe children being held in unsafe environments.
“It has become a more common occurrence for youth to be charged with a Big 12 offense and subsequently incarcerated,” Casanova said. “In the last six months we have had numerous youth who have engaged in crimes that involved violence and the use of firearms. Due to a lack of secure placement and the risk they posed to our staff we have been releasing them back into communities, where the communities and the families they are with are potentially at risk of harm.
“Judges are making decisions to place children and youth with families that DCF would not be able to approve based on prior criminal histories, current allegations of abuse or neglect or holding them without bail because jail is the safest and the only option available to them,” she added.
The rise of teen gangs are complicating the problem, Casanova said.
“In the last year we have seen a higher prevalence of gang activity amongst our youth where they are making videos talking about killing one another, we have seen in the news kids dying, being shot either accidentally or as a result of homicide. We have been lucky there has not been more since we have no secure facilities to hold these youth while we assess their treatment needs,” she told lawmakers.
By December, DCF was ‘staffing’ five youth a day with violent/aggressive behaviors, gang affiliation, sexualized behaviors, destruction of property, personal care needs, medications, mental health diagnoes, and significant medical needs.
Casanova cited many examples of youth DCF has been staffing:
Male, 17, with police reporting multiple responses to the home for physically assaulting parents. Probable cause found to charge with first-degree aggravated domestic assault by chasing a family member with a butter knife, threatening to kill them.
Male, 13, physically assaulted his mother.
Male, 14, who identifies as part of a gang. Charges include reckless endangerment, grand larceny and stolen vehicle. Assaulted Depot (youth facility) staff – pushed, slapped, and punched in the face multiple times while another youth held staff.
Female, 12, attempted to attack her mother.
Male, 15 – entered custody after he was in a vehicle where his friend discharged a handgun, killing his other friend. During this incident, youth was in possession of the handgun and after the shooting he hid the magazine from the gun in his room.
Male, 14 – Car theft, physically aggressive to mother. Punched father in face.
Male, 16 – attempted to take control of the vehicle of his NFI Worker and assaulted her with his crutches and hit her car causing damage. Verbally escalated (swearing and threatening) and used crutches as weapons. A month ago, made threats to kill his family members with a hammer over the span of a few days.
Male, 16 – Aggravated Assault, Simple Assault, disorderly conduct, and False Public alarms.
Male, 13 – Runs away, selling drugs, coerced a female peer into sexual acts. Physical assault to mother and females.
Male, 11 – Charged with arson, unlawful mischief, reckless endangerment.
Female sliced her grandmother with a box cutter and punched her in the head multiple times.
Female Charged w/ Agg. Assault with a Deadly Weapon and Reckless Endangerment shooting sibling and bludgeoned father in the head with a pistol.
Foster parents found bottles of gasoline and lighters in [another] youth’s room. Youth said that he wanted to make a Molotov cocktail to throw at his adoptive parents. He then damaged the state car that the family services workers came in and smashed the windshield as the FSW began driving away.
Another youth was charged with Aggravated Assault after he “tazed” three people with one being injured. The same youth had other assaultive behavior and sexual acting out.
In his budget address Tuesday, January 23, Gov. Scott addressed the growing numbers of violent Vermont youth and the state’s collective inability or unwillingness to hold and treat them.
“I wish I had better anticipated the challenge of implementing laws to raise the age of criminal accountability. Because we weren’t ready. We put the policy idea ahead of the fundamentals, the real work of actually helping our youth.
“Like many other areas, we moved too far and too fast into a policy experiment. And we didn’t plan for, or build, the system needed to address extreme cases, or have the workforce to support it. We focused so much on our well-intentioned goals that we didn’t think through all the possible consequences. Like what adding older, more violent youth to DCF caseloads would do. Or how traffickers would exploit young adults to run their deadliest drugs and expand their markets in Vermont.”